Fishing is Like A Box of Chocolates

                                     

                        My daughter Lori Jean, who is a doctor at Missouri State University, is very alarmed about increasing numbers of tick diseases amongst her patients. She asks me to use a tick repellent on my boots and pants when I am outdoors.  That is something I have not often done, but the urgency in her voice concerning the Alpha-Gal syndrome spread by the Lone Star ticks makes me inclined to follow her advice. It makes one allergic to red meat and has caused deaths in the Ozarks.

            I have produced a 110-page summer magazine, which carries a two-page article about tick diseases written by Lori.  You need to read that article. I have about 100 of that magazine left to distribute.  To get one postpaid send seven dollars to Lightnin’ Ridge Magazine, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613.  Or you can get one by calling my office, 417 777 5227.   The magazine has lots of great outdoor stories in it that I think you will enjoy.  But that article by my doctor-daughter will give you information you need to know about tick-borne diseases.

 

            Fishing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get … and often you’d just as soon it was different than what you ended up with. That’s what happened to me this past week.  On a day that I figgered I would catch the farr out of ‘em--- I didn’t.  But I started out with great anticipation.  Casting nothing more than a twirly-tailed, yellow plastic jig with a lead head, I laid into a hard-fighting fish that arced my rod like he was a slab-sided, black-bellied, frog-eater.  He stayed deep and pulled like a roped goat!  I guess that’s what told me I didn’t have a bass.  A bass would come up and woller around on the surface a little, and maybe even jump clean out of the water.              

          This fish that had grabbed my little eighth-ounce jig just stayed down and pulled with determination…which led me to hope he just might be a walleye.  That was it, I told myself as I let him pull line against the drag of my spinning reel... I had a big walleye, likely 6 or 7 pounds.  In the depths beneath my boat I saw it finally, a white and pink- sided lunker, far different in color than what a gold-sided walleye would be.  I fought that fish for a good five or six minutes.  He was almost two feet long and too big to lift over the side of the boat with six-pound line, so I netted him and let it flop around for a moment as I cast aspersions upon her!  She was a doggone egg-filled drum!!!  But for an angler who   is only interested in fighting a big fish, a six or seven pound drum is not too great a problem.

            I can only add to this story that I was mostly trying to catch some white bass and never saw a one for the next two hours.  But the story is not over.  Two hours later I hooked another big drum, a good four pounds in weight, and had another tussle worth the trip up the river. This time I was more prepared when my walleye turned into a 20- inch drum.  But when you have fished for two hours for nothing but two drum you   aren’t exactly whistling and grinning about your good luck.  

            Then something happened that made the whole trip worth it.  I was just sitting in my boat taking my drum-tempting yellow jig off to put on a little crank bait when suddenly there was a big splash out in the middle of the river. Bass do that. Drum don’t.  So what I did was, I threw that crank bait out about where the rings were spreading out in the water and that bass nailed it.  It was a grand struggle, him taking off with my crank bait and several feet of line and me enjoying the bend of the rod and the whine of the reel. It was a bass all right, and I got to see him come up and jump out of the water trying to throw the hooks. I got my net beneath him, an 18-inch beauty that was half smallmouth and half spotted (Kentucky) bass.  You can see a color picture of the rascal on my website, larrydablemontoutdoors.   
             I don’t like that hybridation but it is seen often in some waters where the southern spotted bass has been introduced.  Most fishermen who catch one don’t realize what it is, but there is a smooth tongue on a true smallmouth and on the hybrid you will see spots on the belly, a raspy patch on the tongue and the red eye of the smallmouth.

            Well anyway that was the last fish.  A three-fish day over three or four hours of fishing isn’t something to brag about when you are an outdoor writer, but the afternoon was a boatload of treasure for me because I love being out there on the river by    myself, fish or no fish.  I shared the time with a pair of eagles and a mink and I thanked God for time I got to spend there. I always do.

 

            

 

Memories of a Fishing Guide

 

     Recently I wrote about floating the Roubidoux River as boy, working as a fishing guide for newspaper editor Lane Davis. Lane liked to fish that river because he felt it received less fishing pressure and might have more fish, if not bigger  ones.  I always wondered, what the Roubidoux River was named after.  The French name ‘robidou’ means “son of Robert”.

       It was a great river then, but not so much now.  Deeper eddies there have been filled with gravel and sand… so much of the fish habitat is gone.  And the water flow is much less now than it was in the 60’s, because dozens of small springs that fed the river have dried up. Modern Ozarkians do not realize what a water crisis our country will experience in another fifty years or less.  Our Ozark rivers will become creeks. 

       Back in 1960 there were no aluminum river boats or canoes, but dad had built a couple of 14-foot wooden johnboats that you could use to float small streams. They were heavy but better to fish from than anything made of metal.  The wood bottoms were slick enough to slide over the rocks and gravel and so easy to handle even a kid could paddle one.

       Boy, those were the days… not so much because there were lots bigger bass and goggle-eye and green sunfish, but because there were so many more of them.

       The biggest smallmouth I have ever seen caught from the rivers of the Ozarks was a 23-inch bass I know would have weighed six pounds.  It was the summer of 1959 on the Big Piney, guiding a Houston man and his wife, Joe and Katy Richardson.  I was 12 and it was my first paid trip as a float-fishing guide in one of those old wooden johnboats.  I was paid 50 cents an hour and Joe gave me a five-dollar tip at the end of the day. I told my dad that I had found my life’s profession!

       Back then I had no landing net, so I got out in the water up to my knees and landed Katy’s huge bass by hand. She was a fine lady and fisherman and no one deserved a fish more.  I still have the black ‘Heddon River Runt’ she caught it on and her photo with the fish and the lure are on display in my Big Piney nature center.  I remember it like it was yesterday and I have never seen a smallmouth like it from a river. It was a dark chocolate brown with almost no markings.  I am going to use a picture of the fish to have a replica made for the nature center.

As to the nature center… on May 10 we are going to have a big yard sale there too help pay for some additional work that needs too be done and some displays.  Hope many of you can attend.  We have lots of stuff for sale, some guns and fishing gear, and hundreds of lures, a boat trailer and a kayak or two.

 

And I also wrote about brown trout in a recent column. Here is more about that species of fish…

       Brown trout were introduced to American waters in 1883, from the British Isles and Eastern Europe.  The western U.S. had several species of trout, but there were no brown trout. Missouri stocked a quarter million of them in the Ozarks in the late twenties and early thirties.  Arkansas followed at a later time.

       The brown trout has been stocked and today thrive successfully in Missouri’ Meramec River, the Niangua River Taneycomo Lake, the Current River and the North Fork River. In Arkansas, they are stocked in the White River below Beaver Lake Dam, Bull Shoals Dam, Norfork Lake Dam and in the Little Red River below Greer’s Ferry.  There is evidence that they have actually had a few successful winter spawns in the Arkansas White River.

       Brown trout eat almost anything when they are smaller, from insects and crayfish to minnows, sculpins and shad. The larger they get the more likely they are to eat larger prey…from small rainbow trout to small ducklings to mice.

       Outdoor writer Jim Spencer tells of catching a brown trout near Calico Rock on the lower White that he believes was larger than 30 pounds. He nearly landed the fish but he couldn’t get it in a net he had. There are many browns in the White that are 20 to 30 pounds and most guides there know where to find them when the water is low.  Some have been caught and released.

       I hope readers will check out my websites, larrydablemont.com and larrydablemontoutdoors.   You can email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.